Thaindian News

London, Sep 1 (IANS) Tony Blair hit the bottle to help him cope with the pressures of being British prime minister. He used to have “stiff whisky or a gin and tonic before dinner, couple of glasses of wine or even half a bottle with it”.
Blair, 57, used alcohol as a “prop” as the stresses of the job got on top of him. He became unsure whether he was in control of his drinking - or whether it had control of him.

This revelation comes in a 700-page autobiography titled “A Journey”, which took three years to write and went on sale Wednesday.

The book gives a fascinating insight into Blair’s life as the prime minister, The Sun reported.

Blair admitted he would often resort to wine at the end of a hard day and that his intake was at “the outer limit”.

“If you took the thing everyone always lied about - units per week - I was definitely at the outer limit,” he wrote.

“Stiff whisky or a G&T (gin and tonic) before dinner, couple of glasses of wine or even half a bottle with it. So not excessively excessive. I had a limit. But I was aware it had become a prop.”

“I could never work out whether for me it was, a) good, because it did relax me or b) bad, because I could have been working rather than relaxing. I came to the conclusion - conveniently you might think - that a) beat b).”

“I believed I was in control of the alcohol. However, you have to be honest: it’s a drug, there’s no getting away from it.”

Blair outwardly gave the impression of being in control, despite the pressures brought on by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his internal battles with Labour colleagues — in particular, Chancellor Gordon Brown.

During his ten years at 10, Downing Street, he faced a string of high pressure situations.

He was criticised over failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The toll of British casualties in Afghanistan began increasing.

In addition, Gordon Brown was constantly manoeuvring to take his job and he faced massive opposition within the Labour for his public sector reforms.

Blair explains in the book why he did not sack Brown as chancellor of exchequor, despite the open warfare between them.

“I came to the conclusion having him inside and constrained was better than outside and let loose, or worse, becoming a figurehead of a far more damaging force well to the Left.”